Expatriation.many burning grievances. Great Britain maintained the old German rule of perpetual allegiance, though she had modified it by allowing the right of emigration. The United States, founded by immigration, was anxious to establish what Great Britain was not disposed to grant, the right of the subject to divest himself of allegiance by naturalization under a foreign jurisdiction. Four facts thus tended to break off friendly relations—(1) Great Britain's claim to allegiance over American naturalized subjects; (2) her claim to the belligerent right of search Impressment. of neutral vessels; (3) her claim of right to impress for her vessels of war her subjects who were seamen wherever found; and (4) the difficulty of distinguishing native-born Americans from British subjects, even if the right to impress naturalized American subjects were granted. British naval officers even undertook to throw the onus probandi upon Americans to consider all who spoke the English language as British subjects, unless they could produce proof that they were native-born Americans. The American sailor who lost his papers was thus open to impressment. The American Government in 1810 published the cases of such impressments since 1803, as numbering over 4000, about one-third of the cases resulting in the discharge of the impressed man; but no one could say how many cases had never been brought to the attention of a Government which never did anything more than remonstrate about them.
Orders in council.173. In May 1806 the British Government, by orders in council, declared a blockade of the whole continent of Europe from Brest to the Elbe, about 800 miles. In November, after the battle of Jena, Napoleon answered by Berlin and Milan decrees. the “Berlin decree,” in which he assumed to blockade the British Isles, thus beginning his “continental system.” A year later the British Government answered by further orders in council, forbidding American trade with any country from which the British flag was excluded, allowing direct trade from the United States to Sweden only, in American products, and permitting American trade with other parts of Europe only on condition of touching in England and paying duties. Napoleon retorted with the “Milan decree,” declaring good prize any vessel which should submit to search by a British ship; but this was evidently a vain fulmination.
The navy.174. The Democratic party of the United States was almost exclusively agricultural, and had little knowledge of or sympathy with commercial interests; it had little confidence in the American navy; it was pledged to the reduction of national expenses and the debt, and did not wish to take on its shoulders the responsibility for a navy; and, as the section of country most affected by the orders in council, New England, was Federalist, and made up the active and irreconcilable opposition, a tinge of political feeling could not but colour the decisions of the dominant party. Various ridiculous proposals were considered as substitutes for a necessarily naval war; and perhaps the most ridiculous was adopted. Since the use of non-intercourse agreements as revolutionary weapons against Great Britain (§ 50), an overweening confidence in such measures had sprung up, and one of them was now resorted to—the The Embargo. embargo (1807), forbidding foreign commerce altogether. It was expected to starve Great Britain into a change of policy; and its effects may be seen by comparing the $20,000,000 exports of 1790, $49,000,000 of 1807, and $9,000,000 of 1808. It does not seem to have struck those who passed the measure that the agricultural districts also might find the change unpleasant; but that was the result, and their complaints reinforced those of New England, and closed Jefferson's second term in a cloud of recognized misfortune. The pressure had been slightly relieved by the substitution of the Non-intercourse Non-intercourse Law. Law (1809) for the embargo; it prohibited intercourse with Great Britain and France and their dependencies, leaving other foreign commerce open; but Madison, Election of 1808. Jefferson's successor in 1808-09, assumed in the presidency a burden which was not enviable. New England was in a ferment, and was even suspected of designs to resist the restrictive system by force (§ 180); and the administration did not feel secure enough in its position to face the future with confidence.
175. The Non-intercourse Law was to be abandoned as to either belligerent which should abandon its attacks on neutral commerce, and maintained against the other. In 1810 Napoleon officially informed the American Government that he had abandoned his system. He continued to enforce it in fact; but his official fiction served its purpose of limiting the non-intercourse for the future to Great Britain, and thus straining relations between that country and the United States still further. The elections of 1811-12 resulted everywhere in the defeat of “submission men” and in the choice of new members who were determined to resort to war against Great Britain; France had not been able to offer such concrete cases of injury as her enemy, and there was no general disposition to include her in the war. Clay, Calhoun, Crawford, and other new men seized the lead in the two houses of Congress, and forced Madison to agree to a declaration of war as a Election of 1812. condition of his re-election in 1812. War was begun by the declaration of June 18, 1812. The New England War with England. Federalists always called it “Mr Madison's war,” but the president was about the most unwilling participant in it.
176. The national democracy meant to attack Great Britain in Canada, partly to gratify its Western constituency, who had been harassed by Indian attacks, asserted to have been instigated from Canada. Premonitions of Tippecanoe. success were drawn from the battle of Tippecanoe, in which Harrison had defeated the north-western league of Indians formed by Tecumseh (1811). Between the solidly settled Atlantic States and the Canadian frontier was a wide Theatre of the war. stretch of unsettled or thinly settled country, which was itself a formidable obstacle to war. Ohio had been admitted as a State in 1802, and Louisiana was admitted in 1812; but their admission had been due to the desire to grant them self-government rather than to their full development in population and resources. Cincinnati was a little settlement of 2500 inhabitants; the fringe of settled country ran not very far north of it; and all beyond was a wilderness of which little was known to the authorities. The case was much the same with western New York; the army which was to cross the Niagara river must journey almost all the way from Albany through a country far more thinly peopled than the far western Territories are in 1887. The difficulties of transport gave opportunities for peculation; and a barrel of flour sometimes reached the frontier army with its cost multiplied seven or eight fold. When a navy was to be built on the lakes, the ropes, anchors, guns, and all material had to be carried overland for a distance about equal to the length of England; and even then sailors had to be brought to man the navy, and the vessels were built of green timber: one vessel was launched nine weeks after her timber was cut. It would have been far less costly, as events proved, to have entered at once upon a naval war; but the crusade against Canada had been proclaimed all through Kentucky and the West, and their people were determined to wipe out their old scores before the conclusion of the war.
Disasters by land.177. The war opened with disaster—Hull's surrender of Detroit; and disaster attended it for two years. Political appointments to positions in the regular army were numerous, and such officers were worse than useless. The men were not fitly trained or supplied. The war depart-
